Providing information, education, and training to build knowledge, develop skills, and change attitudes that will lead to increased independence, productivity, self determination, integration and inclusion (IPSII) for people with developmental disabilities and their families.

RALEIGH,
NORTH CAROLINA--"On behalf of the state I deeply apologize to the victims and
their families for this past injustice, and for the pain and suffering they had
to endure over the years."

That quote is from a statement North Carolina Governor Mike Easley sent
to the Winston-Salem Journal Thursday.

"This is a sad and regrettable chapter in the state's history, and it
must be one that is never repeated again," Easley said.

Easley's apology was intended for more than 7,600 North Carolinians who
were surgically sterilized between 1929 and 1974 under the state's eugenics
program.

Easley is the third governor to give an official apology for a state's
part in the eugenics movement. Virginia's Governor Mark Warner apologized in
May on behalf of his state for the sterilization of 8,000 of its citizens.
Earlier this month, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber apologized for his state's
sterilizing of more than 2,600 people, most of whom were in state-operated
institutions.

Eugenics was based on the racist idea that "undesirable" people should
not be allowed to have children. Thirty states had mandatory sterilization laws
on their books for much of the twentieth century. Thirty states had mandatory
eugenics laws by which more than 60,000 people, primarily people with
developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, are documented to have gone
through the procedures. In some circumstances, girls and young women were
forced to go through the operation simply because they were runaways or lived
in poverty.

The eugenics movement began to lose force after World War II when people
learned that Adolph Hitler used the same tactics to sterilize hundreds of
thousands of people during the Nazi era in Europe.

North Carolina, however, dramatically expanded its program after 1945.
The state also targeted black women in the general population and gave social
workers the power to recommend sterilization.

Under North Carolina's laws the third largest number of people in the
nation were sterilized, just behind Virginia and California.

Last week, the Winston-Salem Journal ran an excellent five-part series
on North Carolina's eugenics system.

The GCDD is funded under the provisions of P.L. 106-402. The federal law also provides funding to the Minnesota Disability Law Center,the state Protection and Advocacy System, and to the Institute on Community Integration, the state University Center for Excellence. The Minnesota network of programs works to increase the IPSII of people with developmental disabilities and families into community life.